About the Film

Tupperware!

Using interviews with Tupperware executives and dealers from the early days and wonderful, little-seen footage of Tupperware Jubilees, this funny, probing program re-examines assumptions about American culture in the 1950s.

Timeline: Women, Work, and Plastics History

Starting 1850s

States begin passing married women's property laws, allowing married women to control their own earnings and inheritances for the first time.

1862

At the Great International Exhibition in London, Alexander Parkes presents the first plastic, an organic material derived from cellulose that can be heated and molded, and holds its shape when cooled.

1866

A $10,000 contest is announced for a material to replace the ivory in billiard balls. Formulating his entry, Albany printer John Wesley Hyatt processes cellulose in a new way and invents celluloid, a substance "tough as whalebone; elastic and dense as ivory."

1886

Twenty-eight-year-old door-to-door book salesman David McConnell starts the California Perfume Company when he discovers that the free perfume samples he gives out are the real reason people buy from him. In 1939 his company will be renamed Avon.

1891

A French count named Louis Marie Hilaire Bernigaut, looking for a way to produce synthetic silk, invents rayon.

1900

After witnessing a wine-stained tablecloth being discarded, Swiss textile engineer Jacques Edwin Brandenberger seeks a way for fabric to be wiped clean. He invents a clear, flexible film covering: cellophane.

Starting 1931

E. W. Fawcett and R. O. Gibson, working in an Imperial Chemical Industries research laboratory, invent polyethylene. Their new plastic will play an important role in wartime production as insulation on cables and radar equipment -- but will not be used for domestic purposes until after World War II.

A student lab assistant at Dow Chemical, Ralph Wiley, accidentally discovers polyvinylidene chloride, a film barrier to air and water. Dow gives it the trade name Saran.

December 15, 1936

Brownie Humphrey marries Robert Wise, a Ford Motor Company employee. They move to Detroit.

1938

Earl Tupper founds the Tupper Plastics Company.

Salesman Norman W. Squires writes a script for a "Hostess Group Demonstration Plan" and sends it to the president of Stanley Home Products. His method of direct sales through home parties is so successful that within two years a Stanley executive will call Squires the "Father of the Hostess Plan."

DuPont unveils nylon, the first totally synthetic fiber, developed under the guidance of chemist Wallace Hume Carothers. Within a year, nylon will be introduced as a silk substitute in the manufacture of women's stockings.

1939

Brownie Wise writes in to a Detroit newspaper readers' column under the pen name "Hibiscus." She will contribute to the column for several years.

British prime minister Winston Churchill introduces the phrase "Iron Curtain" to define the line of separation between Western powers and the areas under Soviet control. It marks the start of the Cold War.

Eight thousand U.S. homes have television sets.

October 7, 1947

Air Force captain Charles "Chuck" Yeager breaks the sound barrier, piloting the X-1-1 rocket-powered plane in the first supersonic flight.

Artice and Larry Moore Collection

The Damigella family

1948

Tom and Anne Damigella, who had been selling Stanley Home Products, start selling Tupperware in Massachusetts.

1949

Brownie Wise, who had been selling Stanley Home Products, starts selling Tupperware in Detroit.

Arthur Miller publishes his classic play, Death of a Salesman. The main character, Willy Loman, examines his failure to achieve his American dream of success in sales.

There are one million television sets in the U.S. In the economic boom of the next decade, the number of sets will increase to nearly 160 million.

November 8, 1949

Earl Tupper patents the "Tupper Seal" for closing plastic containers.

Starting 1950

1950

Brownie Wise moves to Florida with her son, Jerry.

1951

Tupperware holds its first sales conference with a handful of early Tupperware distributors in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Jerry Wise Collection

Brownie Wise

May 1951

Brownie Wise is appointed general sales manager of a new company, Tupperware Home Parties, which will oversee all Tupperware sales operations.

October 15, 1951

"I Love Lucy," a television show starring comedian Lucille Ball, first airs.

Dwight D. Eisenhower Library

President Eisenhower

1952

Jean and Jack Conlogue, who had been selling Stanley Home Products, open a Tupperware distributorship in St. Louis, Missouri.

Elsie Mortland starts selling Tupperware. Within a year, she will become the Tupperware Home Parties headquarters hostess, using new products in the company's test kitchen. She is the only woman other than Brownie Wise on staff at Tupperware.

The television shows "This is Your Life," "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet," and "The Abbott and Costello Show" first air.